Category: Goodness

Why I Hate Mr. Darcy

No, that isn’t one of my misleading provocative titles.  I’m not going to be all clever and then reveal that I, like every woman my age, think Darcy is just the most wonderful thing ever.  He’s not.  He’s kind of awful.

If you haven’t read Pride and Prejudice–or at least seen the BBC movie–you might just want to skip down a few paragraphs.

I’ve had this conversation more times than I can remember.  It usually goes something like this:

Any Twenty-something Girl: Oh, I love Mr. Darcy!

Me: Really?

ATG: Yes, he’s just so perfect.

Me: But he’s arrogant and condescending and really quite awful.

ATG: No, he’s not!

Me: Yes, he is.  For the entire first half of the book, he does absolutely nothing to recommend himself.

ATG: But then he loves Lizzie and she brings out what’s good in him and because of her, he becomes this amazing guy!

This certainly makes me a heretic among Austen-lovers, but I don’t even think Colin Firth is that cute as Darcy. Except here. This look is one of the cutest things ever captured on film.

This is the part where I start spluttering.  Now, all you P&P lovers out there, I don’t mean to say that Darcy should be dismissed entirely.  I appreciate that he helps Lydia and I respect the way that his servants and his sister love him.  I think it’s fair to say that deep down he is a decent guy.

But.

I have a real problem with his being the standard to which every man is held (in some circles) as I think he’s a fairly pathetic standard.  He’s arrogant, unkind, and insensitive until he’s got some reason not to be.  Certainly he’s very good to Lizzie once he falls in love with her–well, after his proposal, which is so insensitive as to be cruel.  But a man’s character is defined not just by how he treats those he admires but even more by how he treats those he despises–and Darcy despises most people, so we’ve got plenty of evidence as to his character.

Now I’m not saying he can’t change.  I absolutely believe that we can, by God’s grace, defeat our vices and grow in virtue.  God, I hope we can–the idea of being as loud, emotional, and attention-seeking at 40 as I was at 14 kind of makes me want to die.

Here’s a tip, ladies: if he tells you WHILE PROPOSING that being with you is “reprehensible,” he doesn’t deserve you.

But I can’t sit back and watch women use Darcy as an excuse to date losers.  Oh, they may not make the argument that their stoner boyfriends are just as misunderstood as Darcy, but there’s an attitude that women are already inclined to have that Lizzie and Darcy just encourage: I know the real Fitzwilliam and I can help him to be the great guy that only I can see.

I’ve watched more women make this mistake.  They date guys who booze or cheat or sulk or lie or whatever but they really believe that the glimpses of good they see are their boyfriend’s real self.  And if they can love him enough to draw that real self out, then not only do they get an awesome guy, but they also get to be his savior!

I’m going to be real with you, ladies.  If your friends think he’s a jerk and your family thinks he’s a jerk and his friends think he’s a jerk and his family thinks he’s a jerk, you’re not finding the heart of gold beneath the rough exterior.  You’re being fooled by a jerk.  Or, more often, you’re fooling yourself because you just really want him to be great.

It’s been my experience that most guys will be as good as you require.  Men are hunters by nature; they’re built to chase down the mammoth and they’ll fight until they’ve killed it.  Forget chastity here (okay, never forget chastity, but you get my point), but I’m not talking about keeping your clothes on so that he’ll marry you.  I’m just talking about character, about the way a man will do anything to win the heart of the woman he loves.  If you’re interested in a Darcy and you try to date him so that he reforms, he’s just going to congratulate himself on having captured his prize and see how far he can coast before you freak out about how awful he is.

If, on the other hand, you hold out like Lizzie, he may just surprise you, as Darcy, to his credit, ends up doing.  See, you’re incredible.  You really are–you’re beautiful and captivating and absolutely worth fighting for.  You were born a princess, living protected atop a high tower.

Okay, maybe this farm boy. But work with me here–it’s just an analogy.

But high towers get lonely.  And you might look out the window and see, for example, a farm boy covered in muck.  And maybe you two make eye contact across the distance that separates you.  And you begin to think how handsome he is under the caked-on manure.  And how he has such sensitive eyes when he bothers to look up at you.  And really, how unreasonable of your parents to demand that you marry someone of consequence–they just don’t understand!

So you sigh and you pine and you wait, but he’s just mucking around with the pigs.  And at this point, you have to make a choice.  Most Darcy-lovers of my acquaintance are inclined to rip up their fancy bedsheets, make a rope, and climb down to the sty, after which they are chafed and muddy and in the company of a man who now has no reason to improve his station in life, his object being achieved.

Don’t even get me started on Tangled, which I also love despite the lesson it teaches. She falls in love with a con artist simply because he’s the only man she’s ever met? That’s a great model for romantic young girls.

A wiser princess waits in her tower, knowing that her farmer will either move on (in which case he was never worthy of her love), or he will fight.  If he deserves her, he will wash off the muck, train as a knight, slay the dragon, scale the tower, and take her in his arms.  He will either stay filthy or be transformed, based entirely on what she expects of him.

Now there are plenty of holy, God-fearing men out there who will fight to be good men regardless of what is expected of them.  But there are many more–even really good guys–who will only fight to be good as long as it is demanded of them, ideally by a beautiful woman.  But you can’t be a harpy or a nag, dating or–God forbid–marrying a mess of a boy and then insisting that he change.  Even worldly wisdom knows that you can’t change somebody else.

He can change himself, though.  And if you refuse to compromise your values and your standards, a man who truly loves you will fight to become the kind of man who deserves you.  A man who won’t fight for you never could have deserved you.

Now a reasonable woman can’t be uncompromising on non-essentials.  You can’t refuse to date a man because he doesn’t play the guitar or have curly hair or play football.  But if he drinks too much or uses vulgar language or belittles your family or demeans you (ahem–Darcy!), you can’t save him.  You can only make yourself miserable trying.

Look, I know that Darcy’s shy and socially awkward.  And maybe you can convince me that his tremendous vices are really just a consequence of that.  Or perhaps that he loves Lizzie so much that he reforms himself entirely in order to be worthy of her.  And I’ll admit that I shriek and giggle as much as anyone every time they get together.  I suppose I don’t really hate him (the reformed him, anyway) so much as I hate the way women ignore his flaws and cling to the idea that they can change a jerk into a charming gentleman of 10,000 a year.

After years of hearing Austen distorted to excuse imprudent attachments (read: moronic crushes that will only end badly), I had to say this to all the lovely ladies dating scumbags and thinking they can save them like Lizzie saves Darcy: he’s already got a savior and it’s not you.  If he really deserves you, he’ll fight to be a man who’s worthy of you.  So stay up in your tower, princess, and watch him become the man you know he can be.  And if he stays in the pigsty, count your blessings that you didn’t climb down to him.  You never could have turned him into your knight in shining armor.

Okay, I’m watching the movie right now and I do kind of love him. But that doesn’t excuse years of abominable behavior! He’s washed off the muck, but I’m going to have to see some serious dragon-slaying before I’m convinced.

Consider It All Joy

I knew a 3-year-old who was desperately trying to buckle her car seat.  She howled from the back of the min-van, “WHY DID GOD MAKE MY BUCKLE SO HARD TO BUCKLE???”  I love that her car seat was somehow God’s manufacturing design.

But I’m totally like that when it comes to minor inconveniences.  I get frustrated and, yes, sometimes cry, and complain to God for not making everything in my life perfect.  Yeah, because he doesn’t have anything else to do.

Here are some things that have ticked me off in the past 3 days:

  1. MY LIFE IS SO HARD!!!!
  2. People driving too slowly.
  3. People driving too fast.
  4. Red lights.
  5. Green lights.
  6. Heat.
  7. Rain.
  8. Bugs.
  9. Being late someplace.
  10. Being early someplace.
  11. Traffic.
  12. People who cheat in traffic.1
  13. Not having time to finish a book.
  14. Finishing a book that I didn’t want to end.
  15. People yelling at their kids.
  16. People not disciplining their kids.
  17. Computer programs that think they’re smarter than me and format my stuff the wrong way and won’t let me fix it.
  18. “Spit” as the past tense even in published books!!
  19. Grammatical errors in general.
  20. Hitting backspace on this post, having it go back a page, and having to rewrite this whole angry list.
  21. Prime numbers.2

Tip of the iceberg, folks.

Um, so, chill pill much?  I’m not exaggerating when I say I could easily grumble or shout about something 50 times a day.  I’m that irritable.

I’d guess that most of you are, too, especially in this world of instant gratification and expected perfection.  I feel so sorry for myself when I don’t have air conditioning for two weeks.  Forget the fact that I have running water and a fan and a car with air conditioning and access to air conditioned churches and libraries and homes–I’m hot and you should feel bad for me!

But the other day I read a short essay by Chesterton in which he suggests that irritation is all a matter of attitude and I began to wonder.

Why on earth am I annoyed at a red light when I was running early anyway?  Doesn’t #4 cancel out #10?  Shouldn’t I be pleased that I can avoid the awkwardness of being early?

But I’ve conditioned myself to be annoyed at everything that inconveniences me.  I’ve decided how life ought to treat me and I think it’s unfair if anything doesn’t go according to plan.  How arrogant!  How completely unchristian!

What a waste of time.

Forget virtue for a minute (I know I usually do).  If I want to be happy, this is just dumb.  Why don’t I choose joy?  In minor issues that don’t make any real difference to my life, why don’t I let myself be happy?

I’m sure it all comes back to pride–it always seems to.  But Chesterton’s right (as usual): it’s an attitude issue.  I can’t change the minor inconveniences that plague me, but I can choose to rejoice anyway.

St. James gives us a little attitude check at the beginning of his letter:3

Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (Jas 1:2-3)

Now James is probably talking about actual suffering, which is a matter for another post, but I don’t see why we can’t take his (and Chesterton’s) advice and be a little bit Pollyanna when it comes to the minor inconveniences that give us “terrible days.”  You’ll remember that Pollyanna always played “The Glad Game,” finding something happy in the most miserable circumstances. She didn’t let her situation dictate her mood but chose to find what was beautiful in a given situation.  She’s code for trite optimism, but I think we could all learn a little from the way her choices govern her character.

Why do I choose irritation?  Why do I choose stress?  And it really is a choice; most of the things that “ruin my day” are so minor that I might not even notice them if I’m distracted.  But it feels better to be angry about traffic than it does to recognize that I wasn’t going anywhere important anyway.  Or even if I was, how important could it really be, in the grand scheme of salvation?  How many of the things that drive me to sin are really that serious?

I’m not saying that real suffering shouldn’t be honored.  I’m saying that most of us probably aren’t dealing with real suffering when we’re upset.  We’re probably indulging in some worthless (and possibly sinful) self-pity, which only serves to make us more obsessed with ourselves.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t need the help.  I’m plenty self-absorbed as it is.  Sirach’s good and blunt about this:

Do not give in to sadness; torment not yourself with brooding….  Distract yourself….  Envy and anger shorten one’s life….  (Sir 30:21, 23a, 24a)

That’s all there is to it.  Quit whining about your buckle, change the shirt you spilled chocolate sauce on (or rewrite the email you lost or settle in for some smooth jazz while you wait in traffic or whatever) and be a grown-up.  I’ve been babysitting all week.  God knows the world doesn’t need more temper tantrums.

Mother Teresa once admonished: Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of Christ risen.  So maybe that’s our litmus test: is this worse than Calvary?  Is this so bad that even the pierced hands of Christ on Easter morning couldn’t drive the sorrow from my heart?  Would I be embarrassed to mention to the risen Christ that this was the reason I lost my cool?

And then maybe look for the good.  Or just acknowledge the annoying element and compare it to the other good in your life.  Or get over yourself and realize that the world doesn’t revolve around you.

Consider it joy.  The little stuff, anyway.  That’s my challenge to myself this week: to choose joy even in frustration.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

  1. You can tell I’m back in Northern Virginia when half my post is about traffic. [↩]
  2. Which is why this list now has 20 items–or did until WordPress decided that I meant to have 1 and 2 on top of each other which shows up as one before two with a blank spot that I can’t erase. See number 17, which was actually on here even before that happened. [↩]
  3. Probably not the St. James of today’s feast day which will most likely be yesterday by the time I get this thing published. [↩]

Learning to Love, Not Judge

For a good ten years, I didn’t confess being judgmental.  Not because I was a saint or because I was too hardened a sinner, but simply because of a poor definition.  I thought that “judging” someone meant condemning him to hell and I’m really good at not condemning people to hell.  I’m so aware of God’s mercy and his desperate desire for each soul that I’m not even willing to consign Hitler to hell with certainty–and the Church is with me on this one.1

But I’m starting to realize that judging–the sinful variety–is broader than that.  And so pervasive.  Reading through the comments on my post on kids at church (which has 15,000 unique visitors and 1000 facebook likes and I’m seriously freaking out over here) has been moving and powerful and convicting.  But it’s also shown me just how easy it is to get caught up in what other people are doing wrong.2  This got me thinking about Mother Teresa’s famous quotation:

It’s so hard not to be angry at someone when all you see is how his behavior falls short of what you think it ought to be.  And the angrier you get, the harder it is to love him or even to love yourself.  I’ve found, in a few specific relationships particularly, that it became nearly impossible not to be constantly furious at people until I changed.  I had to stop praying that their behavior would change and start praying that I would stop obsessing over it.

I realized in prayer today that I am a super-judgmental person.  I’m just judging hearts, not souls.

Yeah, that makes it okay.

But I judge everybody all the time.  I judge you on your grammar and your wardrobe and the book you’re reading and, yes, how your kids behave at Mass.  And I saw in the comments on my post that so many people were upset with somebody–their kids or someone else’s kids or other parishioners or a pastor or church in general.  Most people were clearly trying to love and forgive and work through it, but it just got me thinking.

Your goal in life is to be a saint.  God willing, you’ll bring other people along with you, but you can’t fix the people around you.  You can love them and support them and even sometimes correct them, but focusing on other people’s vices, even when they are very real and obvious and hurtful vices, isn’t generally going to help anyone.

I knew a guy once who was just sulky.  I hated him for it until it occurred to me that maybe his options were to sulk or to rage.  Maybe his sullenness was actually a demonstration of heroic virtue.  Here I was thinking he was a rotten person because he wasn’t trying to be chipper when he was upset, and maybe all along he was earning a white martyr’s crown because he wasn’t screaming at anyone.

So I began to wonder–is it possible that everybody’s really doing the best they can?

Maybe the reason they don’t correct his quiet talking in church is because the alternative is screaming and they’re actually quite proud of him.

Maybe she pointed out the cry room because she raised kids in a church without one and really thought you’d appreciate the option.

Maybe he was up all night hearing the last confession of a dying man and doesn’t realize how harsh he was.

Maybe she really has no idea how short her shorts are.

Maybe he’s homeless and the jeans he’s wearing to the Easter Vigil are his best clothes.

Maybe he wanted to complain 50 times since walking in but only let himself say that one thing.

Maybe she only says those things about other women because she’s terrified that she’s worse than they are and gossip seems the best way to hide it.

Maybe she’s from small town Mississippi and doesn’t have any idea that you stand-right-walk-left because she’s never even been on an escalator before.

Maybe he’s not turning–even though the light’s been green for a full 4 seconds–because his son’s in the hospital and he can’t see through his tears.

Maybe she keeps talking during Mass because she really thinks it helps other people enter in when she adds her commentary.

Maybe he smokes like a chimney because the alternative is a much harder drug.

Pinterest thinks Plato said this. I am not convinced.

Now maybe I’m a little ridiculous in concocting these elaborate explanations to excuse people’s behavior, but I’ve found that I’m less angry and more loving when I start to imagine that there’s some reason that people are doing things I wouldn’t do.  And really, there are reasons.  Maybe there aren’t explanations that completely excuse everything, but I can’t know what you’re struggling with that makes you whine or dress or parent or drive that way.  And when I recognize that, I’m so much happier because I’m letting go of my anger and just trying to love.

Perhaps if I were a saint, I could love people without having to exercise my imagination so liberally.  Maybe then I could see only that they’re children of God and not feel the need to analyze and categorize.

But this is where I am right now.  Instead of looking down on you, I’m going to try to assume the best, to see how hard you’re trying.  Because I want you to see my efforts, not my failures, I’ll try to do the same for you.  I’m doing the best I can.  I think most of us are.

  1. We know for certain that there are people in heaven. It’s hard not to believe that Judas is in hell given Mark 14:21, but while the Church teaches that there is a hell, there’s no official teaching that there’s anyone in it. Private revelation in spades, but nothing dogmatic that I’m aware of. If you’re interested in this, check out von Balthasar’s Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? [↩]
  2. No, I’m not talking about you. It was nobody in particular. Blame the Holy Spirit. I’m not judging you, I promise! [↩]

Your Screaming Kids Are Distracting Me

Crying Cecilia 2I was at a holy hour the other night, totally focused and immersed in my thoughts, when from the back of the church came the sound of a wailing toddler.  Just like that, I lost it.  I was completely distracted by some kid who was far too young to be stuck sitting in a church.

And thank God for that.

See, I was totally focused on planning the rest of my night.  I was coming up with a packing list and deciding which posts I could update before I headed out in the morning.  I was thinking about the songs I have on my new smartphone and wondering if the USPS would forward the package I had shipped to the house I was staying at in time for me to get it at the house I was staying at next.  Yeah, I was focused, all right.  Focused on me.

Then that kid started screaming, and I snapped out of it.  I heard the dulcet tones of a toddler tantrum and couldn’t help but thank God for the luxury of silent prayer.  I heard footsteps and a door opening and offered a prayer for the patience of that poor parent.  I prayed for those who were really angry about the disturbance.  I prayed in thanksgiving for the gift of life.

Parents, I know all too well the frustration of taking little ones to Mass.  I calculated this evening (when I should have been praying) that I’ve taken little ones 4 and under to Mass by myself at least 200 times.  So while I’m not a parent, I know the frustration and awkwardness and even shame of that experience.

Case in point: John Paul isn’t so great at first person pronouns.  He refers to himself as “you.”  This was great when he was potty training and announced at the top of his lungs during the Eucharistic prayer, “You awe weawing undewweaw!!”  There were definitely panty line checks all around the sanctuary.

I’ve gotten plenty of dirty looks.  But more often, by God’s grace, I’ve gotten affirmation.  People thank me for bringing “my” kids and compliment me on their behavior.  Once after John Paul threw a particularly loud fit at Mass, an elderly man came up to me and told me it was the holiest sound he’d heard all day.  “He reminded me that I’m alive,” he said with a smile.

But more often than not you don’t notice the smiles.  You notice the rolled eyes and raised eyebrows and dirty looks and you think that at best you’re not making anyone angry.  But that’s not true–at best, you’re making the people around you saints.  You’re pulling them out of their self-obsession and reminding them that being at Church is about emptying ourselves for God and each other.

Prayer is so often just a veil for narcissism.  We talk and talk and talk about ourselves and then slap an “Amen” on the end and consider ourselves holy.  When your kids start screaming, it distracts us from ourselves.  We start praying for you.  Or for them.  We pray for single parents.  We pray in thanksgiving for our grown children or we beg for screaming children of our own.

I was visiting with my grandmother the other day and mentioned that Cecilia shouted stream-of-consciousness for the entire Mass today.  She said, “Oh, do they let children in the church?”  Needless to say, she’s not Catholic.  But it’s an attitude I’ve found from some Catholics.  “Until they’re old enough to sit quietly,” they say, “leave them at home.”  Or maybe “You know there’s a cry room, right?”  As if the Mass is their personal property and they get to decide who stays and who goes.

Jesus embraced children, folks, and so does our Church.  If you don’t want to hear them cry, the solution is not to remove the holy little ones from the church.  The solution is for you to go to the 7am quickie Mass or the solemn high Mass that takes 3 hours.  Find a Mass kids aren’t going to and shut yourself up in that one.

Or maybe offer up your distractions and frustrations for their parents, who are so much more distracted and frustrated than you.  Take this as a sign that God is calling you out of yourself.

Ooh look at her shoes! I wonder how many states have more vowels than consonants. How far is it from here to Maine? I should make a pie this afternoon. 3.14159. What would I even do with a giant mouse suit?

Because if the normal noises of normal children are going to distract me, I was going to be distracted anyway.  By cute clothes or cute men or split ends or whatever1.  And nobody’s suggesting that we wear burqas to Mass or segregate our congregations or require frequent trims.  Unlike most of the thoughts that grab my easily-distracted mind, the screams of your children are a distraction that draw me to deeper prayer.

So take them to the cry room if you want–or stay in the pew.  Lord knows that at many churches if you’re in the cry room you’re practically not at Mass, it’s such a circus in there.  Keep them as quiet as you can however you want to–I won’t judge.  They’re going to be ridiculous and you’re gong to be embarrassed, but taking them to Mass gives them grace, earns you years off of purgatory, and breaks my hardened heart just a little bit.

On behalf of those of us who don’t understand the sacrifices you make to bring your kids to the wedding feast, I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for judging you and being annoyed at you and rolling my eyes and everything else that focuses on me instead of on us.  Your kids are a very important part of us, even–especially–when they won’t stop yelling.

Because yes, your kids are distracting me.  They’re distracting me from my narcissism.  They’re distracting me from the idol I’ve made of worship, making me encounter God as he really is, not as I want him to be.  They’re distracting me from the endless series of irrelevant thoughts that occupy my “praying” mind.

Your screaming kids are distracting me.  Thank you for that.

  1. I’m not kidding.  I seriously examine my hair for split ends during the penitential rite.  Really, your toddler is the least of my spiritual worries [↩]

Using the World: Technology in the Christian Life

6 weeks ago, I had facebook, email, a borrowed computer, and a go phone with no data or texting.  Now I’ve got facebook, a facebook page, email, my own computer, a smartphone with a few dozen apps, twitter, linkedin, and a website.  The world is very different.

I held out for as long as I could–I didn’t get a cell phone at all until I was out of grad school and then it was one of these models:

20 years later, I still think he’s cute

But after going cold turkey when I entered the convent (and for about 9 months after leaving), I discerned that it was time to enter the 21st century.  A big part of my discernment of the vocation to consecrated virginity (God willing) was that I feel that I’ve been called to be in the world.  Religious1 are called to leave the world, however much they might have to interact with the world for the sake of their ministry.  They have the luxury (and discipline) of rejecting many good things in pursuit of something greater.  Consecrated virgins, like diocesan priests and lay people, are called to be in the world but not of it, to use the world but not use it fully (1 Cor 7:31).

I began to realize, both in the convent and in the months after leaving, that the Lord has blessed me with the ability to be fairly detached from material things.  I’m able to listen to secular music without being affected, really, by what it glorifies.  I’m able to be sarcastic without being hurtful (I hope).  I’m able to be online without being a hot mess.  A lot of the way I connect with people to do God’s work involves being in the world.

With this new step into full-time blogging and speaking, I figured I had to be more connected.  And now here I am with everything in the world at my fingertips and so much to procrastinate–help!

So I’ve come up with some technology guidelines to help me keep myself in check.  I know it’s ridiculous to publish a list of smartphone rules when I’ve had mine for, like, 15 seconds, but I’ve been judging people’s smartphone habits since the things first came out, so I’ll do it anyway.  Adults, some of these will be obvious to you.  They are not obvious to your children.

1. Be present.  Oh my gosh, put your phone away!  I’ve had kids arrange to meet with me and then pour their hearts out to me while checking their text messages.

Love this.

First of all, RUDE!  If I’m not worth your time, why are you wasting mine?  Second, how can you really engage in this conversation and be open to what I have to say if you can’t shut everything else off for 20 minutes?

This is the reason I’m writing this days ahead of time–when you read it, I’ll be on a mission trip.  I’ll have wi-fi, but I want to be present to the people who are there, so I’m going to try not to use it.  So make the same rule for yourself–put your phone away when you’re with friends or family.

My rule for my students on the way to and from retreats has always been that if they’re using a phone or ipod or whatever together, it’s fine.  But if they’re plugged in alone, we’ve got a problem.  Once they shut the world out, they’re missing real life for their virtual world.  If whatever you’re doing in real life is worth your attention, don’t divide yourself.

2. Don’t replace human interaction.  I’ve actually had teens tell me that the reason they drink is because they don’t know how to have a conversation.  Everything “meaningful” in their lives takes place over text message or twitter.  Tell me again how relationships can develop in snippets of fewer than 140 characters?

I’ve known kids to start dating, have a “relationship,” and break up all via text.  So when they’re in a room with actual human beings and expected to engage in social behavior that people have been engaging in for millennia, they panic and supplement their electronic awkwardness with awkwardness of the good, old-fashioned drunken kind.

Oh, and then post all the pictures on facebook so they don’t have to tell anyone the next day.

All this social media can be great, but it’s easy to use it to hide from real life.  Have real friends.  Have conversations.  Have evenings with no cell phones.  You’ll find you have plenty to talk about.

3. Be alone with yourself sometimes.  A while back, I was with a bunch of kids in adoration.  One of them prayed for a while, went to confession, prayed a little more, then pulled out his cell phone.  When I called him on it, he told me he didn’t like to be alone with his thoughts so he had to find something to fill the silence.  That’s a problem!  The more you fill your life with good things–music and games and texting and facebook–the worse those things become.

There’s a reason people are still taking off to “find themselves” at 30 or 40–they’re so scared to be alone with themselves that they’ve filled their lives with noise so they don’t have to deal with their real issues.

Avoid the quarter-life crisis: take some time every day with no phone, no music–just you, yourself, and you.  I recommend inviting God, too.

4. Pretend you’re not dependent on technology.  Don’t google everything.  If you can’t remember who played Zack Morris, wait 30 seconds before you look it up!  Seriously, your brain will atrophy if you don’t use it every once in a while.  And don’t rely on spell check.  It will fail you, your teacher will fail you, and your parents will fail to sympathize.  Also, “u” is not a word.  If you use it again, I will punch you in the face.  It’s two extra letters.  It won’t kill you.

No idea what movie this is, but it’s funny.

5. Do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. (Col 3:17)  All this new media is great for feeding your soul and spreading the Gospel, but you have to make an effort if you want to jump on board with the New Evangelization.  Follow some Christian blogs along with Cakewrecks and Paula Deen.  Tweet about today’s Saint.  Share good Christian articles on facebook–this guy knows how it’s done.  Get some of the many sweet apps with prayers or readings or Saint quotations.  How cool would it be if your iphone made you a Saint?

On that note, run, run, RUN from anything impure.  Get yourself some serious porn protection so that your firewall is strong when your flesh is weak.  Tape pictures of your sister and the Blessed Virgin Mary to your computer if that keeps you from losing your soul.  You know what you need to do.

I think it comes down to this: as in all things, be intentional.  Technology can be addictive (case in point: it’s 1am.  I have to pack up everything and be out the door at 7:30.  But–but–Pinterest!) but it can also be a great gift.  Choose when to be plugged in and when to unplug and be still.  Make specific rules for yourself if that helps–no facebook after 10pm, only an hour of Angry Birds a day, never ever ever click “Popular” on Pinterest, that sort of thing.

Be in the world, but not of it.  Use the world, but don’t use it fully.  Don’t let social media and cell phones dictate who you are and how you live.  It’s easy to let the internet run your life.  You’re better than that.

Because Catholics are awesome and have patron Saints for everything, let’s ask for some help from the patron of the internet.  St. Isidore, pray for us.

 

I’m offline until June 29th.  The posts will keep coming, but I won’t reply to anything for a while.  Be patient with me 🙂

  1. People who take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience–nuns, sisters, monks, etc. [↩]

5 Rules for Fathers of Daughters

I mentioned before that I was a teenager in the 90s.  This was a bad thing even for those with an innate fashion sense and wads of cash.

Oh, how I wish I could forget….

For those of us who were nerdy, broke posers, it was catastrophic.  I distinctly remember buying a worn-out pair of Umbros at a thrift store because Maia Matthews wore Umbros and she was awesome.  I had pink flannels from Caldor and chunky heels from Payless.  And I’m pretty sure I wore them all together.

I think my best outfit of that cringe-worthy era was a fabulous combination of oversized men’s jeans with a cropped tank top.  Oh, and because showing your boxers was cool for boys, I bought plaid underwear to sag my jeans over.  Pretty much, I was awesome.

I think I was going for something like this.  Yes, always take advice from “Married with Children.”

So that my 13-year-old pudge could be admired by as many people as possible, I would get all dolled up in this outfit and ride my bike around the neighborhood.  It was a disaster.

And my father thought I looked beautiful.

Okay, objectively he was wrong (and probably ought to have told me to put on more clothes).  But my daddy always thought I was beautiful.  Until I moved out of the house, I modeled every new outfit for him.  And every time, no matter how ridiculous the ensemble was (why did I WEAR terrycloth?), his jaw dropped and he said, “WOW!”

Now, I’ve had my share of body image issues.  Like every teenage girl I’ve ever met, at some level I hated myself.  But let me tell you: at the deepest level, I knew I deserved to be loved.  Because my daddy loved me so well.

Gentlemen, you are hands down the most important person in your daughter’s life.  Forget moms (sorry moms–you matter, too), friends, boyfriends, teachers.  Aside from God, there is no more important relationship.  I mean, no pressure, but so much of the woman she becomes comes down to the way you treat your little girl.  So in honor of my daddy and fathers everywhere, I want to give you my top five rules for dads based on years of working with teenage girls and even adult women who are, largely, as broken as their relationships with their fathers set them up to be.

1.  Love her.  I know this is obvious.  Hopefully it goes without saying.  But guys, you’ve gotta love that little girl like your life depends on it.  Because hers does.

I sure hope you’re captivated by her.  I hope you think she’s beautiful and smart and clever and worth cherishing.  But if you don’t, learn to.  Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a choice.  If you don’t think your little girl (whether she’s still in the womb or 60 years old) is incredible in every way, figure out how to.  Make a list of everything you love about her.  Sit down with an album of pictures of her and marvel at how she’s grown.  Write down all your favorite memories.  Pray for her,  Every day, without fail.  You can’t always be who she needs you to be, but you can always pray.

If your daughter is older and has hurt you, I’m sorry.  But I’m going to need you to be the grown up here and learn to forgive.  It’s hard to love a sullen teenager.  Believe me, I know.  That’s what I do for a living.  But this isn’t just feelings–this is a lifelong battle for the everlasting joy of the little girl you created.  You do what it takes to love that girl.  Because if you don’t, she’ll find someone else to.  And unless you’ve set a high standard, whatever man she finds to to love her like you were supposed to is just going to crush her spirit more.

2.  Tell her you love her.  I don’t care if you think she already knows.  Tell her.  Tell her every day.  Really, a woman can’t hear it enough.  My mom says she wanted to tell her kids she loved them so often that it was commonplace.  “Sure, Mama, whatever.  Can I have 10 bucks?”  And there were times when I found it annoying as a child.  But when I didn’t have a date to homecoming, I knew somebody loved me.  When I put on the freshman 15, I knew somebody thought I was beautiful.  And as much as I love my mom, it wasn’t her affirmation that I remembered.  A woman needs that affirmation from a man.  Blame the Fall if you want, but the fact remains that a man’s words mean much more to a woman than another woman’s words do.  If you don’t give your daughter this love, she’ll do whatever it takes to get it from some other man.

So tell her you love her.  But tell her in a thousand different ways.  Tell her she’s beautiful.  You don’t have to go all awkward goo-goo eyes on her (and please don’t ever, ever use the words hot or sexy to talk about your daughter), but tell her she looks nice in that sweater.  Tell her she has a sick jump shot.  Tell her you love her drawing or her dimples or her poetry or whatever.  Don’t limit your affirmation to her appearance–girls need to be more than pretty–but compliment her appearance.  Most men don’t need to hear that; most women do.  Don’t just compliment her on things she’s accomplished, either.  She needs to know that your love doesn’t depend on her corner kicks.  Do NOT call her names–even behind her back.  You say positive things or you say constructive things.  Then tell her you love her again.

Buy her flowers.  Write her a letter.  Write her a poem if you can.  I roll my eyes every time my dad writes me a poem (I told you he was amazing) but I keep them because they tell me what I’m worth.  Sometimes, just look into her eyes and tell her she’s everything you ever wanted in a daughter.  When she’s little, she’ll just run off to play.  When she’s a teenager, she’ll probably roll her eyes.  But those words will change her life.  She needs to know that you love her always and forever, no matter what.  She needs to hear you say it.

3.  Show her you love her.  It doesn’t matter what you say to your little girl if you don’t put your money where your mouth is.  So hold her while she’s little.  I don’t care if you don’t like to cuddle.  If she likes to cuddle, you cuddle that child.  Carry her when she asks.

Pack her up and take her with you if you have to.

Show up to everything.  Every game, every recital, every awards assembly.  No meeting is as important as her debut in the school play.  Cancel whatever you have to cancel–your vocation is not to make money.  Your vocation is to love your daughter.  Nothing is more important than being there for her.  You never know how long you’ll have with her.  No regrets.

And while you’re at it, don’t just show up–do something!  Take her on a daddy-daughter date.  Go to a zoo or a museum or just the playground–just you and her.  When she gets older, take her on her first “real” date–show her how a date ought to treat her.  When she moves out, call her just to talk.  Chicks love that.  Show up to help her move.  Treat her like a lady–holding doors and carrying things–so she knows that’s how a gentleman behaves.  Convince her not to waste her time with worthless men.  Listen when she complains and don’t try to fix it for her.  Most women just want to be heard, not to be solved.  She’s a person, not a puzzle.

Take the freaking ballet class with her if that’s what it takes!

Hold her when she cries.  Hug her often.  Kiss her on the top of her head.  Buy her presents that mean something.  Do NOT try to buy her love.  Change her tire or teach her to change her oil or let her give you a makeover or play ball with her in the driveway or take her fishing or read books together or take her to see the Rolling Stones (how are those guys not dead yet?) and then go with her to see Taylor Swift.  There will be moments in there that are boring or awkward or awful but what she will remember is that you loved her that much.  Get to know your little girl and love her the way she needs to be loved.  She deserves nothing less.

4.  Love her mother.  John Wooden is famous for saying, “The best thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.”  The relationship you have with your daughter’s mother sets the standard for every relationship she will ever have with a man.  She needs to know that a woman deserves to be cherished and protected and adored.  So if you yell at your wife or roll your eyes or demean her, stop.  Right now.  Maybe yelling has to happen sometimes, but not in front of your kids.  You need to treat your wife the way you want your daughter to be treated.  If you wouldn’t want your daughter to marry a man like you, be a better man.

This kid’s a fan.

Showing her how a woman ought to be treated also includes romance.  Take your wife on dates.  Kiss her often–in front of the kids.  Don’t be gross, but let them see that love can stay alive in a marriage.  A friend told me recently that her 2-year-old niece saw a picture of two people gazing at each other and said, “Dada and Mama!”  The picture looked nothing like the girl’s parents, but when she saw love, she thought of her parents.  Your daughter deserves to see marriage as beautiful and romantic.  And she needs to see that the place for romance is in marriage.  Make her believe that her knight in shining armor won’t just slay the dragon and ride off into the sunset, he’ll kiss the princess awake every morning afterwards.  She deserves to believe in fairy tale love.  Your wife deserves it, too.

I know this is a complicated world and maybe you’re not married to your daughter’s mother.  You can still treat her kindly and talk about her respectfully.  If you don’t have custody, you fight for all the time you can possible get with your baby.  If there’s a stepmom, treat her like a queen.  If your daughter’s mom has passed away, you can tell wonderful stories and explain how much you loved her mom.  She identifies with her mom, whether they have a good relationship or not.  She needs to know that you’re not going to stop loving her if something terrible happens.  The mother of your children deserves to be respected in front of them even if that respect doesn’t go much further.  Do it for your kids.

5.  Love all women.  Treat every woman with dignity.  Every one.  The cashier, the obnoxious little girl on the playground, the politician on screen.  You’ve got to be consistent in the respect you show for women.  This means especially that you run from anything impure.  If you’ve got a problem with pornography, get help now.  Even if she never finds out (and she will), porn makes you look at women differently and she’ll start thinking men ought to see women as objects.  No porn.  Change the channel when something inappropriate comes on TV.  Talk about the positive things you see in women–and mention their beauty even if they’re heavy.  If you only think skinny girls are pretty, your daughter will think she’s fat and ugly even if she’s a size two.

Basically, I’m saying be this guy to everyone.

Open doors for all women, not just pretty ones or old ones.  Step up and be a servant.  Look at women like they’re human beings–you’d be surprised how many “decent guys” can’t even look kindly at a stranger.  If you can look at every woman the way you look at your little girl, she’ll know what a real man is and you’ll be a saint.

 

This is a lot to ask.  I know it is.  But not only do you set the standard for her relationships with men, you set the standard for fatherhood.  Christians have been taught to call God Father; I’ve met too many women who can’t love God because they’ve been so hurt by their fathers.  Don’t do that to her.

This daddy thing isn’t something you can compromise on.  It will take the rest of your life to become the kind of dad your daughter needs.  It’ll take a lot out of you.  But don’t you think she deserves it?

 

P.S. Happy Father’s Day–I love you, Daddy!

P.P.S. This list gives some great thoughts.  This article, too.

A Challenge to the Church on Her Birthday

This morning, I went to Mass at the church across town, one I rarely go to.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever met the pastor, although many of my friends are parishioners.  After I received communion, Father asked me if I was an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion (a lay person commissioned to distribute the Eucharist).  I was fairly taken aback, as I don’t usually make conversation with Jesus in my mouth.  “Not here,” I said.

“The ciborium’s on the altar,” Father continued.  “Take communion up to the choir.”  Now I’m a good Catholic, so when a priest tells me to do something at Mass, I do it.  I went back, got the ciborium (bowl of consecrated hosts), and went back to the choir loft.

Now, I’m so much not a member of this church that I had to stop at one of the pews and ask for directions to the choir loft.  I was very confused that Father had asked me, of all people.  I don’t even know him.

But this is a small town.  And he knows me.  He knows that I’m a religion teacher.  He probably knows that I’m discerning consecrated life.  I would imagine that he knows I used to live in Georgia and I recently bought a car and I wear size 10 shoes and I hate bananas.  Because that is how small towns work.

People complain about small town life but, after two years, I’m sorry to go.  There’s something about being known by the people around you.  Sure, you can’t go to Walmart in your pajamas without being judged by your kindergarten teacher and your mechanic, but you also can’t fly under the radar.  Wherever you go, people are interested in you.  They ask what’s wrong when you look a mess.  They hear about your big news through the grapevine and are excited for you, even if they barely know you.  Strangers walk up to me and tell me they’ve seen my study guides.  How do you know me and why do you care?  Because it’s a small town and that’s what we do—we know and we care.

I’m a social person.  I’m such an extravert that I have to take breaks from work to talk to people or I’ll never accomplish anything.  So it stands to reason that I would enjoy always having someone to chat with.  I wasn’t surprised when, after years of suburban sprawl, I loved small town life.

I think, though, that small towns fill a need we all have: the need for community.  We need the accountability of being missed when we skip Mass.  We need the accountability of being noticed when we’re out two-timing our spouses.  We need to know that what we do and say does not go unnoticed, that our sins hurt not only us but the body of Christ.  Small towns sure as heck provide that.

We also need to know that we are needed, that we are known and loved, that we belong to something bigger than ourselves.  We need to know that people care about us.  Sure, it’s hard when people get gossipy or judgmental, but that’s the fault of fallen people, not of community.

I love living in a small town because it does for me what my parish rarely has: it provides community.  I’ve found few Catholic churches that really feel like family; not the way Atchison does, anyway.

There are a lot of reasons that Catholics leave the Church for various Protestant denominations: difficult Church teachings, bad Church music, and blah preaching are high on the list.  But I think a huge player in this game is the fact that Protestant churches are real communities.  They’re not just buildings where people happen to show up once a week.  In the best cases, they’re the social center of the parishioners’ lives.  This is where you see your friends, where you met your wife, where you go for love and support.

He was generally less enthused than I about the holy sacrifice of the Mass.

For Catholics, not so much.  Take this example: when I was 25, I spent half a year in a parish where I went to Mass every day.  In a crowd of about 40, I was the only person between the ages of 7 and 45.  I took my baby nephew with me every day.  At the end of my time there, Father still didn’t know my name.

I spoke with a Protestant friend about this.  She mentioned that she had started seeing someone but she didn’t want to take him to church with her.  “You know how gossipy church ladies get,” she said.

“No, actually, I don’t,” I replied.  “People at my church don’t care who I’m dating.  They don’t even know my name.”

This isn’t God’s plan for church communities.  Protestants have “church homes.”  Catholics go to a dozen different parishes depending on convenience.  In most cases, we don’t know each other.  We duck in right before Mass and hurry out after communion, eager to beat the traffic.  Churches try to combat this with soup suppers and doughnuts after Mass, but it rarely works.

It comes down to this: Catholics are really good at having the Church.  We’re not so good at having churches.  These aren’t communities.  We’re not walking together, supporting one another.  The Mass is all about community as we speak together in the plural voice, and yet we don’t know each other.  It’s ironic, the faceless anonymity we cling to as we celebrate the redemptive death of a God who commanded that we love each other as he loved us.  He loved us enough to die for us.  We don’t love each other enough to learn each other’s names.  Seems sketchy to me.

So I guess I’m really asking a question here.  What are we doing wrong?  Why are Catholic churches so rarely home to people?  Have you seen a church home done well–Catholic or Protestant?  What can parishes do differently to bring people in, to build relationships and genuine community?  Can this happen at the parish level or does it have to be part of some lay movement of like-minded people?  On this feast of Pentecost, the birthday of the Holy Church, can we figure out a way that our churches become our families?

I guess I just feel as though my church ought to be more a place of fellowship than the clearance aisle at Walmart.  Call me crazy.

 

Give me your thoughts in the comments!

On Hippies and Hypocrisy

A few years back, I was driving from Atlanta to Kansas City—easily a 14 hour drive, and I was doing it all at a stretch.  Alone.  No biggie, I thought.  I’ve done longer.  So I was cruising along, fist-pumping out the sunroof to the best parts of my favorite songs (okay, yes, it was Footloose) when disaster struck: Bonnaroo.  I started seeing signs telling me to expect Bonnaroo traffic.  I honestly thought it was some kind of imported Australian animal, so I called my sister to Google it.  Turns out it’s an outdoor music festival—think Woodstock but crunchier.

My sister’s roommate told me to go, but I was too excited about the prospect of reaching the land of barbecue and limeade, so on I went.

Until the traffic hit.

Now I’m from DC—I know from traffic.  In high school, I knew at least a dozen different ways to get to school, depending on time of day, weather conditions, and who was in office.  Showing up 2 hours late to school was excused if you were stuck in traffic.  I literally kept a book in my car for rush hour.  So traffic doesn’t generally bother me.

But this was no ordinary traffic.  We were stopped.  So stopped that some of the Bonnaroo folk were parking their cars, grabbing their…paraphernalia…and walking to the campsite.  They were laughing and strumming their guitars and looking all emo and I.  Was.  Stuck.

The longer I sat there, the more I started to hate them.  Those stupid little hippies with their “music” and their “camping” and their “free love.”  I gritted my teeth and turned up my mainstream 80s pop music to drown out the folk music I imagined coming from the flower children.  As I inched by crowds of androgynous people wearing Birkenstocks and throwing Frisbees, I felt old and angry and self-righteous.  Stupid kids and their stupid Bonnaroo.

I was 22.

Finally, after probably 2 hours of crawling, we passed the booming metropolis of Manchester, Tennessee and traffic picked up.  After that infuriating fiasco, though, I was low on gas, so I pulled off at the next stop to refuel.  And the stupid hippies were there, too!  Standing around in their “ripped jeans” with their “shaggy hair” and their stupid unwashed selves, they had the nerve to be getting gas at the very same gas station I was at!!!

Have I mentioned that I get really angry really easily?

I pumped my gas with a vengeance, burning with anger at these people whose fun was literally ruining my road trip when I caught a glimpse of myself in the gas station window.

About as ridiculous as I look here, just not in the same way.

I was wearing flip flops.  And jeans that were more holes than jeans.  And a 10 year old t-shirt from an island-themed musical.  My hair reached halfway down my back.  It had been blowing out the sunroof, so it was huge and frizzy.  And unwashed.  And held back by a bandanna.

I was one of them—I was one of the hippies!  And they were looking at me and smiling.  They thought I was their friend!  And I was NOT THEIR FRIEND BECAUSE THEY MADE TRAFFIC AND I HATE TRAFFIC!!!!!!

That was when I realized that I was absolutely ridiculous.

“Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?” (Mt 7:3)

The trouble is, when I’m angry I don’t generally see people as people, I see them as obstacles.  When I’m annoyed at the airport, it’s not at the little old lady shuffling along but at that thing in between me and my gate.  When a kid won’t shut his mouth in class, I’m not mad at Ben, I’m mad at something that won’t stop making noise.  I reduce people to what they are and ignore who they are, but I get angry when others do the same to me, when they see only the bandanna and the ripped jeans and don’t know that I AM A SERIOUS ADULT WITH VERY IMPORTANT BUSINESS AND NONE OF THIS HIPPIE MUSIC NONSENSE!

But how can I expect people to bear with me, to love me, to see me for who I am if I won’t even try to do the same for them?  It’s an obvious problem in a crowd, surrounded by nameless, faceless strangers, or online, when you’re dealing with pixels, not people.  And it’s less embarrassing there; I mean, you’d have to be Mother Teresa to love each individual in the world, right?

I think this detachment seeps into the rest of my life as well, though.  That crying girl is keeping me from my dinner.  If my friend weren’t sick all the time, maybe I’d get to see that movie with her.  And it is just so typical of my sister to say something like that!

And here’s where I really struggle.  It’s not so much that I depersonalize those closest to me, lumping them in with all the other hippies instead of admiring their unique combination of dreadlocks with tie-dye.  It’s that I define those I “love” by my terms.  “That kid’s a hippie and isn’t it just typical that he’s smoking a blunt and wandering along with a Frisbee!” I say (figuratively), and that’s my excuse not to love.

You see, the more I can define people by their screw-ups, the angrier their screw-ups make me.  If my co-worker is rude to me once, I can ignore it pretty easily.  If she’s rude to me every day, pretty soon I’m angry even when she’s polite.  If my 2-year-old nephew, refusing to say he’s sorry, says, “I’n seethee!” it’s actually pretty cute the first time.  Once he’s said it 35 times in a day, I’m angry at him even before I ask him to apologize.

Dietrich von Hildebrand talks about this in Man and Woman: Love & the Meaning of Intimacy (which, admittedly, I have not read).  He says:

A representative mark of genuine love is found where each of the other person’s worthwhile qualities is looked upon as really his, as typical of him.  But his shortcomings are presumed to be deviations from his real self.  Where something undesirable is apparent, the expression “That’s not like him” is characteristic of love….  Where there is genuine love in response to the person’s beauty as a whole, it is to be expected that his negative traits will not be considered typical….  Love considers everything negative as a deviation.

It seems, then, that patience and real love are choices, not accidents.  When we choose to love someone, we choose to view all her faults as atypical.  Of course, I’m not saying that you should ignore the fact that your girlfriend criticizes you nonstop or that your boyfriend hits you.  I’m saying that when there are relationships we must maintain, the best way to do that is to refuse to brood over injury or rejoice over wrongdoing (1 Cor 13, if you’re keeping track).

Just as people falling in love somehow seem not to see each other’s faults, we can choose not to see each other’s faults.  St. Ignatius Loyola once said (I think—the internet doesn’t seem to agree) that we ought to say of every man we meet, “Jesus died for this man.”  For me, this is more powerful than trying to see Christ in everyone, because some people just don’t seem much like Christ.*  Serial killers, for example, or middle schoolers.  But Jesus died for them just the same.

When Jesus was hanging on the cross, he was thinking of me.  And he wasn’t thinking, “Oh, it’s just so like her to brag about that.  Ugh, she’s always trying to make other people feel small.  Oh, now she’s going to get mad about something stupid?  How typical!”

When Jesus thinks of me, he sees beyond my sins to the person I was made to be.  When we love as he loved, we choose to look beyond people’s flaws and see their true selves.  We refuse to be slaves to impatience and anger.  We love them as they are, just as we want to be loved.  We choose not to define people by their sins—even their constant sins.

Why do we demand to be treated as people when we treat others like things?  Why, when we see a splinter in our brother’s eye, do we look down on him instead of trying to help him get it out?  Forget about whether or not you’ve got a wooden beam—why do you hate people for their sin instead of trying to love them through it?

We’ve all got someone in our lives whose poor behavior is “just typical.”  Maybe your teenage daughter rolls her eyes every time you talk.  Maybe your mother asks you the same questions you’ve already answered over and over again.  Maybe your wife spends every dinner complaining about her day.  Here’s your challenge: refuse to see that flaw as part of that person.  Recognize that it’s not okay and choose to move on.  Because your daughter is so much more than her bad attitude.  And your mother is nosy because she loves you.  And your wife is so beautiful and so kind and so tired.  You are not your sin.  Neither are they theirs.  Judge not.

 

 

 

*Although if I’m really being honest I have to admit that if Jesus came today he’d probably be road-tripping to Bonnaroo right now.

Love Hurts

As a high school teacher, I hear some pretty sweet gossip.  Sure, they usually frame it as concern for their friends, but what it really is is rumor-mongering.  Because they don’t actually want me to do anything.  And they don’t really want advice.  What they want to do is voice their concerns about their friends in a way that poses absolutely no threat to them.  And so they come to me, they pour out their hearts about all the bad things everybody else is doing (concealing, of course, how drunk they were when all this happened), and they go away satisfied.  “I want to help,” they think.  “I really do.  But there’s nothing I can do.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately—about how so many of these kids can want to be good and so few feel strong enough to do it.  It’s because they don’t have any real friends.  Sore, they’ve got plenty of people who’ll stay up all night laughing with them.  They may even have a few who’ll stay up all night crying with them.  But they don’t have anyone with the guts to make them cry.

The world tells us real friends don’t make us cry.  Real friends are super-awesome and really fun and never judge ever no matter what.  I typed “best friend” into Pinterest for proof, and check out what I got:

Oh, that’s Christian friendship, right there.  Best friends don’t help you stay sober, avoid drunken idiocy, and prevent alcohol poisoning, but they’ll carry your drunk butt home after you’ve made a fool of yourself.  Best friends don’t help you process and forgive, they burn for revenge along with you.  And nobody better call you out on whatever got you stuck in jail—bail me out or come with me, but don’t you tell me not to screw up.

You want to know why good people gossip?  It’s because we don’t have the guts to be good friends.  We know our friends are screwing up and we want them to do better but we’re too interested in our friendship and not interested enough in our friends.

That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?  The reason we don’t call our friends out on their nonsense is because we’re afraid they’ll be mad.  We tell ourselves that we don’t want to hurt their feelings, that we know it won’t help anyway, but really we just don’t want to lose the security and popularity of having that friend.

Think about it—don’t you have a few relationships like this?  A friend who’s dating a loser and everybody knows it but nobody’s willing to say something to upset her?  A friend who’s bordering on alcoholism but you don’t want to judge?  I know I do.  I claim to love my friends but I’m not willing even to risk being awkward to save their reputations, their lives, their souls.  What kind of love is that?

Jesus tells us that the greatest love we can have is to lay down our lives for our friends (Jn 15:13).  And then he puts his money where his mouth is.  He embraces his cross with joy because he would rather die than spend eternity without you.  And it’s a sweet image, isn’t it, this pristine Jesus hanging on the cross?  We wash his body and put him up in our churches and talk about all those nice things he said to sinners.  “Neither do I condemn you,” says sweet surfer Jesus with his kind eyes, and we shut the Bible before he tells the woman to sin no more.  We make stained glass windows showing the love the Father has for his prodigal sons but we skip Matthew 23 entirely.  Read it—the whole thing is pure condemnation.  The man who is Love incarnate yelled at people and called them names—because he is love.

Jesus ate with tax collectors and prostitutes and even Pharisees.  He loved them.  Really loved them.  Which meant that he wasn’t content to cover their sins with platitudes and let them go happily on their way to hell.  He loved the woman at the well and so he pointed out her sin.  He loved the Pharisees and so he called them a brood of vipers.  Jesus loved them exactly as they were but he loved them too much to leave them that way.  When we say love hurts, we don’t just mean that it hurts to love.  We mean that sometimes what real love does is inflict pain—knowingly, intentionally—in order to heal.

Now, I’m not advocating that you go storming into your best friend’s favorite bar and flip over the tables.  And I’m pretty sure that you’ll get arrested if you bring a whip to school for when people start sinning in the hallway.  But consider for a minute: do you have a friend who needs some tough love?  And are you really helping her by pretending everything’s okay?

If you have the guts to say something (after much prayer, of course, and with all the gentleness that the situation warrants), you’re probably going to suffer.  A real friend will (hopefully) see that you’re speaking from love.  But he may be furious.  He may stop speaking to you.  He may hate you forever.

But maybe he’ll change.  Maybe he’ll see your point and try to be better. Maybe twenty years from now, he’ll thank you.  Maybe you’ll find yourself in a real David-and-Jonathan kind of friendship where you love each other honestly and challenge each other to grow and in a hundred years we’ll list you together when we pray the Litany of Saints.

Or maybe not.  You may lose your friendship and gain nothing.  But you have to ask yourself: am I willing to suffer for this friend?  Would I rather be lonely, knowing that I did my best to help her grow, than secure in a shallow, fake friendship?

Or am I content to sacrifice my friend in order to preserve my friendship?  Because if you are, that’s not love at all.

This Christianity business is a lot messier than the greeting cards would make you think.  Christmas was more manure than glowing baby.  Easter was more creepy holes in the hands than pretty white lilies.  And real friendship is sometimes more about tears and discomfort than about hugs and laughter.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I have a phone call to make.